was probably no one who produced tobacco in very large quantities who was not in correspondence with persons engaged in business residing in London, Bristol, Plymouth, Liverpool, and other English towns on the seaboard or river coast. As early as 1628, perhaps in consequence of the exactions of the traders in Virginia, some of the colonists united in exporting their tobacco to the mother country, where it was sold for the articles they needed.[1] This course of action was continued by individual planters, especially by those who purchased the crops of their neighbors in great quantities in hope of securing a wide margin of gain; the consignments of such men were eagerly sought by the English merchant, as in the bulk they were so large as to afford a certain profit. Every shipment by the planter in Virginia to his English correspondent was accompanied by a bill of lading, giving the person to whom it was addressed the right to sell the products named in it; the English merchant thus brought into relations with the colonist was not only his commission merchant in the modern sense of the term, but also his general banker, having many hundred pounds sterling on deposit to his credit.[2] These balances were easily converted into such goods as the planter thought proper to direct to be sent him; if the cost of the articles specified, as a whole, should exceed the amount of money resulting from the sale of the tobacco, the merchant was
- ↑ Neill’s Virginia Carolorum, p. 55. The planters who accompanied their crops to England in 1628 in the Temperance may not have intended to return.
- ↑ Numerous accounts of Virginian planters with their English merchants are preserved in the records of the seventeenth century. The following may be given as an example (Records of York County, 1657-1662, p. 413, Va. State Library):
